Please document here all tips and advice you have for maintaining the PODC web sites.
Frequently asked questions
How are the PODC web sites organized?
All of the general information about PODC is in a top-level web site with the address https://www.podc.org. All of the information specific to the PODC 2025 conference is in its own web site with the address https://www.podc.org/podc2025, and similarly for every conference year.
All of the PODC web sites are hosted by a single web hosting account at a web hosting company hired by the ACM. That account is running WordPress in multisite mode, which means that all of the PODC web sites are running under the same installation of WordPress. Other conferences like DISC do the same kind of thing.
In the year leading up to PODC 2025, we have use the top-level PODC page to advertise the conference and have the top-level PODC 2025 page redirect to the top-level PODC page. Most people go to www.podc.org to learn about PODC, so we just keep the current information there. Then, when PODC 2025 is over and we start organizing PODC 2026, we copy the PODC page to the PODC 2025 page, turn off the PODC 2025 redirection, rewrite the PODC page for 2026, and turn on PODC 2026 redirection to PODC.
Where do I put the pages for the Dijkstra and Disseration awards?
Coming, but the short version is please put the citations for the awards in the top-level PODC web site under the Dijkstra and Dissertation pages, and please put the calls-for-nominations for 2025 for both awards in the PODC 2025 web site.
How do I move pages among the PODC web sites?
Coming, but the short version is the move a page to wherever you want it to live, but consider installing link redirection so that links to the old location will redirect to the new location.
How do I keep WordPress software up-to-date?
Coming…
What web-hosting tools exist to help me?
- Back ups: A tool to make backing up the site as easy as clicking on a button. You must be logged in as an administrator to do a back up. The back up comes in three pieces, and you can choose to receive any or all of the pieces: The database holding athlete profile data, the database holding the WordPress data, and the remaining files in the filesystem including the WordPress code, all images, all back issues of the Wingfoot, etc.
- Simple links: A tool to replace permalinks of the form https://www.podc.org/about with page-id links of the form /?p=479 on every post and page. This has two values. First, removing www.podc.org from the link makes it easy to move the database from one site to another (eg, between the production site and a staging site like a local copy of the web site on your laptop). Second, replacing /about with /?p=479 makes it easy to move the page around in the page hierarchy without breaking links within the site. This tool means that authors can feel free to use human-readable links while editing a page, and administrators can run this tool periodically to convert links to a more robust form (eg, before moving pages around).
- Page listing: A tool to list all published pages and posts on the site. The tool can also list pages with page ids and posts with post ids.
- Replace url with post id: A tool to help replace all links to imported pages appearing in both WordPress and static pages with a link to the WordPress page.
- Rename slugs: A tool to help change slugs for imported pages from the default slug obtained from the page title to something more familiar.